Rumor: DinoLand, USA to become Indiana Jones Land?

[amberpi]

The wild, reckless and totally irresponsible speculative side of me, however, hopes that SW Land and the resort are trial balloons for a full blown park - and that "Galaxy's Edge" (rather than a more familiar SW world) was chosen because it would be connected to the fifth gate (similar to the Hogwarts Express) and literally be the "Galaxy's Edge" of the full SW world in the other park - the spaceport to send you off to a galaxy far, far away. But that's the SW fan in me.

I've had the same thought in my little fangirl heart since I heard about GE and the hotel. They could connect them by somekind of Sky bridge/or space terminal.

 

[ShadeDK]

I'm down for that. In your proposed version, I'm assuming we'll have dragons, right? ...lol. Not sure what the preoccupation with dragons is today.

Dragons, unicorns, minotaurs, manticores, hydras, chimeras, sphinxes, harpies, gorgons - the list goes on, but definitely dragons

 

[amberpi]

Dragons, unicorns, minotaurs, manticores, hydras, chimeras, sphinxes, harpies, gorgons - the list goes on, but definitely dragons

That all sounds awesome. I'll bring my other nerdy hobbies like World of Warcraft and Magic The Gathering.

 

[ShadeDK]

That all sounds awesome. I'll bring my other nerdy hobbies like World of Warcraft and Magic The Gathering.

The more the merrier.

Thinking about this more, there's an incredible amount of potential and opportunity for the area that's currently DinoLand (even if it became DinoLand 2.0). We can only hope that Disney captures even a fraction of that possibility - which, admittedly, would still be very, very exciting.

 

[amberpi]

The more the merrier.

Thinking about this more, there's an incredible amount of potential and opportunity for the area that's currently DinoLand (even if it became DinoLand 2.0). We can only hope that Disney captures even a fraction of that possibility - which, admittedly, would still be very, very exciting.

WDW could do anything - obviously. I mean they straight up were like "floating mountains - got it." They could do something amazing with dinos, and keep Dinosaur instead of getting rid of stuff. There's a ton of space between that and Everest they could use, or they would just demo it and make it Australia or something like people have been banging on about forever. I mean, we all want to eat kangaroo, right?

 

[umichigan10]

Animal Kingdom has always supposed to have the mythical creates. Look at the Animal Kingdom logo. There is a dragon in it. No where does it say it has to be only real beings. Animal Kingdom already has areas with real conservation efforts. Conservation station for example is just that. Avatar is just a different way of showing that.

I wrote an article for the Dis on how it fits. I can link to that with more examples if you'd like.

They make the conservation point abundantly clear in the preshow of flight of passage as well

 

[ShadeDK]

WDW could do anything - obviously. I mean they straight up were like "floating mountains - got it." They could do something amazing with dinos, and keep Dinosaur instead of getting rid of stuff. There's a ton of space between that Everest they could use, or they would just raise it and make it Australia or something like people have been banging on about forever. I mean, we all want to eat kangaroo, right?

Excellent point. I think that's one reason why many people get dissatisfied with certain attractions - no matter how good it is, there's an idea of how much better it could've been with Disney's creative and financial resources (cf. DinoLand). It can be difficult to dissociate the actual from what could have been. The good thing is: the sky's the limit and AK has room to grow. I'll skip the kangaroo though. Emu's probably better for you.

 

[Roxyfire]

That all sounds awesome. I'll bring my other nerdy hobbies like World of Warcraft and Magic The Gathering.

Ya know, I feel like the Pandora area is already kinda like that area in the Burning Crusade expansion where Nagrand (floating mountains) meets Zangarmarsh (glowy plants). The blue aliens= space goats! It almost works...

 

[Moliphino]

Plus, wasn't the Dino ride its own thing and then redone to include the Dinosaur movie? Besides, Dinosaurs are essential to me. They need to be there.

I don't think they really changed anything except the name.

 

[lockedoutlogic]

I don't think they really changed anything except the name.

Correct...they put a statue or two of characters out front and wiped ctx from the signs...

...that name was so much better

 

[dodolitsky]

I don't think there is anything Disney can do to salvage Dinoland. The best case scenario would be to get rid of Dinorama, and instead to turn the entire land into a well-themed prehistoric jungle with dinosaurs. However, there is already such a land at IOA, which contains one thing a Disney land never could - the extremely valuable Jurassic Park IP. Therefore, Disney has to keep its dinoland different, by doing such things as giving it a cheap carnival theme. They're better off just scrapping the whole dinosaur idea altogether.

On a similar note, the window for The Beastly Kingdom closed when The Lost Continent was built in IOA.

 

[amberpi]

On a similar note, the window for The Beastly Kingdom closed when The Lost Continent was built in IOA.

I totally disagree - no IP to compete with (as you mentioned and I agree with regarding Jurassic Park) and there is SUCH a huge range of what Beastly Kingdom could include, the possibilities are endless. Dueling Dragons wasn't that great anyway. WDW could do better.

 

[maverik85]

I'd be ok with Indiana Jones being incorporated into the park, but don't think there shoudl be an entire land devoted to him. I think it'd be better to have it be a general South American section. Can turn Dinosaur into an Indy temple ride like at Disneyland and give the Boneyard an archeoligcal dig theme. This way they could still incorporate dinosaurs into the land (as there have been plenty of different fossils found in South America) and a temple would still fit. Could also incorporate a rainforest section into the area as well for something different. I coudl see this going in the space curently used for Dinorama.
This way overall we get a land that still fits in with the overall feel o AK, maintains dinoasaurs in the park to a degree, and brings in new stuff.

 

[ShadeDK]

I don't think there is anything Disney can do to salvage Dinoland. The best case scenario would be to get rid of Dinorama, and instead to turn the entire land into a well-themed prehistoric jungle with dinosaurs. However, there is already such a land at IOA, which contains one thing a Disney land never could - the extremely valuable Jurassic Park IP.....

On a similar note, the window for The Beastly Kingdom closed when The Lost Continent was built in IOA.

This statement became 1000 times more entertaining when I imagined Brian Roberts (CEO of Comcast, owner of Universal) dressed in white linen like Belloq and lunching in Cairo with Bob Iger, saying: "Again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away. So once again, Iger, what was briefly yours is now mine." (I'm keeping it on topic here...).

 

[CounselorX]

Dinosaur is possibly my favorite ride in WDW - at least in the top 5. I hope they keep Dinoland and just beef it up. I would agree the whole carnival area should be re-done to something non-carnival-like.

 

[amberpi]

This statement became 1000 times more entertaining when I imagined Brian Roberts (CEO of Comcast, owner of Universal) dressed in white linen like Belloq and lunching in Cairo with Bob Iger, saying: "Again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away. So once again, Iger, what was briefly yours is now mine." (I'm keeping it on topic here...).

I wonder who picks up the check in that scenario. I wonder what Iger's drink of choice is. I bet it includes unicorn tears or something.

 

[SaharanTea]

I don't think they really changed anything except the name.

Correct...they put a statue or two of characters out front and wiped ctx from the signs...

...that name was so much better

So you were always searching for the Iguanadon that happened to be in the movie? Did they craft the movie after the ride, or was it some kind of concurrent thing?

From a little reading the movie was in some way conceived in '88. It doesn't go into much detail about how they relate other than having at least two dinos in common and a few obvious nods in the ride.

 

[lockedoutlogic]

So you were always searching for the Iguanadon that happened to be in the movie? Did they craft the movie after the ride, or was it some kind of concurrent thing?

From a little reading the movie was in some way conceived in '88. It doesn't go into much detail about how they relate other than having at least two dinos in common and a few obvious nods in the ride.

I think they concurrently developed the movie and the ride...or modified the character in the movie to be the iguanadon.

It was always the iguanadon.

But was that an issue? It really would have never affected the movie at all.

 

[dodolitsky]

I totally disagree - no IP to compete with (as you mentioned and I agree with regarding Jurassic Park) and there is SUCH a huge range of what Beastly Kingdom could include, the possibilities are endless. Dueling Dragons wasn't that great anyway. WDW could do better.

I guess that's fair, but most of the ideas Disney originally had for its Beastly Kingdom were used in the Lost Continent, so they'd have to take it in a different direction. Anyway, the Lost Continent has been shrinking thanks to HP and it could be gone completely in the next several years

 

[cavepig]

So you were always searching for the Iguanadon that happened to be in the movie? Did they craft the movie after the ride, or was it some kind of concurrent thing?

From a little reading the movie was in some way conceived in '88. It doesn't go into much detail about how they relate other than having at least two dinos in common and a few obvious nods in the ride.

Yep, the ride is basically the same, always getting the Iguanadon out. I think it was where the movie and ride were in production at the same time and knew they could use the ride to promote the movie when it came out. Out front of the ride it used to be water the Iguanadon (but just remembered it was a triceratops there first)was standing in, then they filled it in with plants, probably cause people let there kids swim in it (I witnessed that many times). THey've added some new effects recently and they tamed it down some way back to change the height requirement to the 40", but otherwise it's the same. "Countdown to Extinction" was a more fun name for sure.

Before Dinorama was the big white tent was some fossils, dino skeletons and more dig site stuff which was cool but no rides so at least Dinorama brought rides.